Boxwell Greats: Ward Akers
If anyone deserves the title of “Boxwell Great,” it is Ward Akers.
Akers came to Middle Tennessee (then the Nashville) Council in 1947. According to _Boys Will Be Men_, Akers graduated from Roanoke College in 1935 with a Political Science major. He had been a Life Scout before entering professional Scouting himself, a journey that took him to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where he became lifelong friends with Floyd “Q-ball” Pearce. Hired by Leslie G. Boxwell, Council President, to head the then Nashville Council for a whopping $4800 a year, Akers became the second Scout Executive of the Council.
While Akers brought a number of changes to the Council, for our purposes, it is enough to say Akers was unhappy with the Narrows of the Harpeth Boxwell as he hoped for a much larger camp. The Narrows camp could hold no more than 100 Scouts per week! So, in 1949, Akers got Boxwell moved to a third site–Rock Island. (1949 was also the year that the Nashville Council became the Middle Tennessee Council). Unfortunately, even the Rock Island site was not ideal. As Colonel Gilbert Dorland, head of the council Camping Committee put it, Rock Island was “too far from the center of the Scout populations… [and] Conditions there are very primitive” (Creighton 144). Another new Boxwell was needed.
This led to the largest capital campaign in Scouting’s history up that point–a $900,000 campaign for what would become the Old Hickory Lake Boxwell. Akers was instrumental in this development.
Ward Akers, Jr. recounts a fascinating story about this new Boxwell. As Akers, Jr. stated in a 2001 interview, “One Sunday, daddy said you want to go for a boat ride on the Cumberland River and I said Yeah, that’d be fun! And we met Richard Parker at the dam. Well, it wasn’t really a dam at that time, it was a lock. And put in at the boat dock there, the Cumberland River. And daddy had a bunch of maps in his hands, a bunch of rolled up maps. We went up the river, oh, maybe two hours and then, I think it was Spencer Creek, pulled into Spencer Creek… We went up Spencer Creek a little ways, maybe two or three hundred yards. The land was flat on the left hand side, barren, I mean barren. It looked like it hadn’t rained there in 10 years. Rock everywhere. No grass, no trees, no nothing. Terrible looking. And Richard… eased [the boat] up on the bank and we got out and daddy laid out the maps on the ground. Then he rolled them back up and we walked up about, oh I don’t know, toward this white farm house. There was a big barn there, a big old grey barn, about to fall down. Went up about another, well, just before that barn and he laid the maps back down again and put a rock down on each corner. Now, he said, the water’s going to come to right here. I said, what are you talking about? He said, the water’s going to come to right here. He said, we’re going to move Boxwell down to here and I’m going to build a camp here. And I looked at daddy and I said, Daddy, you’re crazy as hell!”
Akers had it all laid out. When the camp was completed in 1960, he had three permanent camps completed–Stahlman, Parnell, and Murrey. However, forseeing the future, there were waterfront slabs laid down in what would become Camp Craig and also in Camp Light. By 1967, Akers had the old cabin renovated and this became Ittabeena, known today as Fehrmann’s Training Center, but earlier as Aker’s Cabin. Akers would stay at Camp and, with trailers set up nearby, so would E. B. Stahlman!
Akers also oversaw the 1972 Capital Development Campaign that built Camp Craig, the program directors’ cabins, and the Handicraft/Tradint Post sheds. It too was the largest capital campaign in Scouting’s history.
Ward Akers was forced to retire in 1975, but his influence over Boxwell has been incalculable. More than any other single person, Ward Akers created the Boxwell that we know today.
Pictured here is Ward Akers with his dogs from the collection of Lori Locke, daughter of former ranger Willie Claude.
A photo of Council Executive Ward Akers and his dogs, circa 1973. Akers served as Council Executive from 1947 to 1975 and was responsible for not one, but two Boxwells–Rock Island and Old Hickory Lake.